Predator hacks Xbox Live enforcer

A hacker recently gained access to Stephen Toulouse’s Xbox Live account and the policy enforcer has since commented on the assault.

Xbox Live’s head policy enforcer Stephen Toulouse had his Xbox Live account compromised over the weekend and a hacker known as Predator took the credit. Toulouse is in charge of making sure that everyone on Xbox Live is playing nicely, so if anyone hacks, cheats, or is harmful to others, Toulouse is the one who deals with it.

The security leak originated with Toulouse’s personal website, stepho.com, and not with Xbox Live. Predator was able to manipulate the site’s web host in order to gain access to Toulouse’s personal information and was then able to obtained his Xbox Live password.

Predator then used the information to make a bunch of crank phone calls.

“He got an old cell phone of mine, and yeah, he called it occasionally,” Toulouse told Joystiq. “I have a six minute one where he and his friend discuss all the different ways they’re gonna have sex with my wife.”

In a Youtube video that has since been taken down, Predator claims that he was only reaching out to Toulouse in order to demonstrate the holes in his security, although Toulouse isn’t convinced. The fact that Predator has been banned from Xbox Live 35 times might have motivated the attack.

“I would say ‘reaching out for contact’ is an extremely generous phrase,” Toulouse said. “Most of the stuff that he leaves on there is flat out harassment. It’s not contact. He’s not trying to help or do anything. He’s mostly just insulting me. And I get that from time to time. It’s just the nature of my role. The kids sometimes try to go after me — it’s not that big a deal.”

That’s not to say that Toulouse is taking the attack lightly. Toulouse once again has control of both his Xbox Live account and his website, and he says that Microsoft is taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.

“What he did, from a lot of people’s point of view, I think, is a crime, and we’re going to be investigating that,” said Toulouse. “We certainly take threats against accounts seriously. We want to make sure that our customers are protected as well.”